Food has gotten so bad at one prison that inmates are using ramen noodles as currency instead of cigarettes

A
lunch at a cafeteria inside a men's prison in Rosharon,
Texas.Thomson
Reuters

Drastic cuts in prison food services over the last few decades
have resulted in inmates using packets of ramen noodles as
currency, according to one recent study by the University of
Arizona.

As spending on correctional facilities and services has decreased
across the board, inmates have started to use ramen noodles as
the barter good of choice to replace the poor-quality prison
food, according to the study, authored by Michael Gibson-Light, a
doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona School of
Sociology.

Gibson-Light interviewed approximately 60 inmates at a state
prison as part of a study on prison labor. The prison, which he
identified only as in the Sun Belt region of the US, has
approximately 5,000 inmates.

Ramen "is
easy to get and it's high in calories," Gibson-Light told The
Guardian. "A lot of [inmates], they spend their days working and
exercising and they don't have enough energy to do these things.
From there it became more a story, why ramen in particular."

While some may assume inmates switched to trading ramen noodles
instead of cigarettes because of prison bans on tobacco,
Gibson-Light emphasizes that in spite of those bans, cigarette
sales have gone up as "black markets have emerged and
tobacco sales have reportedly increased." And more importantly, a
number of prisons, including the site at which Gibson-Light
conducted his research, do not have full smoking bans and still
saw a shift from cigarettes to ramen noodles as currency.

Previously, "luxury" goods such as cigarettes, stamps, and
envelopes were considered the most popular barter goods in
correctional facilities, according to the study. In recent years,
prisons have transferred costs onto prisoners or cut services to
remain cost-effective — a trend Gibson-Light termed "punitive
frugality."

Spending cuts in food services were apparent at the state prison
Gibson-Light studied, by way of prisons purchasing "ever-cheaper
provisions, shrinking serving sizes, and limiting the number of
meals that inmates receive per week."

Michael Gibson-Light/University of
Arizona

In the early 2000s, inmates at the prison received three hot
meals per day, but after another private firm took over food
preparation and distribution, Gibson-Light notes, "the second
meal was reduced in size and changed to cold cut sandwiches and a
small bag of chips." Lunch was later removed from weekend menus,
and portion sizes in all meals were further reduced.

"It's 1,000 times worse," one prison worker told Gibson-Light of
the food. "They don't even let the cooks test it, 'cause it
tastes that bad. They won't let us season it! Throughout the
state, there needs to be some sort of sitdown strike to set it
right."

Over the years, inmates at the prison have become increasingly
dissatisfied with the quality and quantity of food they receive,
and some have contemplated rioting and other forms of violence,
though none were carried out during the study.

Some inmates who were interviewed were outwardly critical of food
services, with one saying "they treat us worse than the [police]
dogs. They feed the dogs better." Another added that if an inmate
didn't get more food on their own, they would starve.

In one instance, a correctional officer told Gibson-Light not to
eat the food at the prison because he could get food poisoning.
The officer claimed to have gotten food poisoning after eating
"prison chow," later finding out that the chicken he had eaten
was labeled "not for human consumption."

Some inmates told Gibson-Light that the sharp decline in quality
and quantity of food is the result of a prison population that's
increasing faster than what the Department of Corrections can
afford.

"There's so many people in prison now that DOC can't afford to
feed all these people. They're following the [minimum calorie]
guidelines and they're right on the line of that," said Levi, a
prison cook interviewed for the study.